Northumbria Police will investigate an allegation of perverting the course of justice after a report found Scotland Yard made “numerous errors” into its doomed investigation into VIP paedophile allegations.

A highly critical report by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques said the decision to abandon the inquiry should have been taken much earlier.

He identified a catalogue of failings in the £2.5m Operation Midland, which closed without a single arrest earlier this year.

As part of the review, the Met said Northumbria Police would investigate a claim that “a complainant” had attempted to pervert the course of justice.

A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: “We can confirm we are carrying out an investigation at the request of the Metropolitan Police into allegations of perverting the course of justice.“

As key parts of the report were published, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he “fully recognised” that D-Day veteran Lord Bramall, former Tory MP Harvey Proctor and the late former Home Secretary Lord Brittan were all “innocent of the offences of which they were accused”.

He apologised to Lord Bramall, Mr Proctor and Lord Brittan’s widow for “the impact of Operation Midland on their lives”.

Sir Richard’s damning review found 43 failings in Operation Midland, including believing the complainant, a man known as “Nick”, for too long; one officer announcing that his claims were “credible and true”; and applying for search warrants with flawed information.

The former judge said: “The principal cause of the many failures in this investigation was poor judgment and a failure to accurately evaluate known facts and to react to them. A major contributing factor was the culture that ‘victims’ must be believed.”